How has teaching changed during the pandemic? What assumptions has the pandemic challenged? What questions does it raise? In this article, Grawemeyer Award joint winners Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan revisit the classic and most-cited text on the nature of teaching by Dan Lortie who passed away in 2020 at the age of 94. Three of Lortie’s insights are addressed in this article.

• Teacher collaboration that was scarce in Lortie’s day in the 1970s has not only increased since then but accelerated even more in the pandemic as teachers have sought each other out for answers to novel challenges.
• People, including parents, learn what it’s like to teach by having watched teachers teach them. During coronavirus, parents have been watching teachers teach online that is not usually the way teachers most wish to teach. This has generated stress and tension. But it has also raised questions about what might be a more productive form of teacher transparency than traditional meetings and report cards after COVID-19.
• COVID has threatened what Lortie called the psychic rewards of teaching that come from having visible impact on student learning and engagement. This is one of the greatest weaknesses of online, remote learning and raises questions about how and how much remote options should be scaled up in the future.